Arctic ice ties a record low

This is the time of year when the grim reports come out about the shrinking extent of sea ice in the Arctic.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center has announced that the extent for February tied with a previous low, February of 2005. "The downward trend is clear," it reported.

The center also found that Air temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean were between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius (4 and 7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than normal.

Their website is fascinating, with lots of graphics -- even animations showing the ice growing and shrinking. You could rummage around on it for quite a while.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has reported that the disappearing ice in the Arctic "has triggered another dramatic event -- one that could disrupt the entire ecosystem of fish, shellfish, birds and marine mammals that thrive in the harsh northern climate."

"Each summer, an explosion of tiny ocean-dwelling plants and algae, called phytoplankton, anchors the Arctic food web," writes reporter Brian Vastag. "But these vital annual blooms of phytoplankton are now peaking up to 50 days earlier than they did 14 years ago, satellite data show."

As with other ecosystems, this may put the food -- the phytoplankton -- out of sync with the organisms that eat it.

The study leader was Mati Kahru, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. The work was in the journal Global Change Biology.

Kahru told Vastag, "The trend is obvious and significant, and in my mind there is no doubt it is related to the retreat of the ice."

Ecologists worry that the early blooms could unravel the region's ecosystem and lead to crashes of the food web, Vastag wrote.